I took a long, hard look at my stack of binders for important papers. Perched atop a narrow shelf for CDs, they looked like a movie background as well as an avalanche waiting to happen. Surely a lot of those papers could do with a thorough recycling by now?
Yes, they can. But they were not started on their way there today. Do you realize how much of your life you can recall by going through your purchases and other important reciepts stretching back fifteen years or slightly more? Sure, quite a bit is utility bills. But I was reminded of my Palm IIIe. How we drove to purchase it on a sale. How I took it out of my pocket after biking in heavy rain, finding it in good order. How easily the screen scratched from the stylus. How I enjoyed writing on it, using original Graffiti.
Rent for my various apartments. The creaky floor of my second apartment and the light through the window and door out onto the balcony springs back to mind. The purchase of my original Xbox, my first console. My first Mac, my much loved 12-inch powerbook, almost within arm's reach from where I write this. Receipts for my plane tickets to Hong Kong, my first trips abroad on my own. Routers bring memories of the study when I lived with my parents, how it looked, how the desks were arranged and how I wired things up various ways.
The package of DVDs I bought one day when I was starting to fall ill, being wowed by the fact that I actually had them in my hand the very next day.
Receipts for actual debts and payments on whole apartments, for that matter. People who lived in the same places, the board members of the association I was involved in. Drinking whiskey and joking with the oldest man of the board before walking in a slight haze back to my place mid-day.
So, well, I think I will hold on to that stack just a while longer.